Here's What 'The Wolf Of Wall Street' Looked Like Before Special Effects

Aly Weisman

Tuesday

Jan 21, 2014 at 12:00 PM

"The Wolf of Wall Street" may not have used special effects to the same scale as, say, "Life of Pi" or "The Hunger Games," but the Martin Scorsese-directed, Oscar nominated film subtly used VFX to add that extra pizzazz to Jordan Belfort's colorful life.

Brainstorm Digital recently released a video showing the before-and-after "of the more challenging shots we put together" from the film, so we broke it down below.

Remember that wild party scene in the Hamptons where Belfort, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, first met his future second wife?

Here's what it looked like in the final cut of the film audiences saw in theaters:

But here's what the house and surroundings looked like originally:

Special effects were used to replace the trees and parking lot...

... with a neighborhood of houses:

So that it ended up looking like this from afar:

Then there's this scene in which a real lion parades through the office:

No people were actually in the room at the same time as the lion, who was escorted on a leash by a trained professional during filming:

The people were placed in the shot in the editing room, and the lion trainer removed:

In the film, Jordan Belfort marries his second wife Naomi on a beautiful tropical island:

But here's what the property actually looked like during filming:

The wedding set-up was later cut out...

... And placed on a beach backdrop:

When Jordan goes to London to visit Aunt Emma, she greets him outside of her fancy apartment:

The scene was really shot at this small brick home:

And later edited through special effects:

The two later go have a chat in a picturesque London park:

This is what the park really looked like. Note the added sculpture to the left and greener grass above.

Jordan and Naomi later take a trip to Europe on his yacht:

Here's what it really looked like when Naomi was walking back to the boat:

Now watch even more before-and-after scenes in this video put together by "Wolf of Wall Street" special effects team, Brainstorm Digital.